


A Language Without Words

by windychimes



Category: Bastion
Genre: Evacuation, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-24
Updated: 2014-05-24
Packaged: 2018-01-26 09:25:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1683329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windychimes/pseuds/windychimes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Bastion speaks in a voice only the Kid understands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Language Without Words

After they set sail, everyone rests for a long time. Zia sleeps off the exhaustion of worry, and when she wakes, it’s back again as she worries about two stupid, injured boys; Rucks sleeps off the weariness of age, and his own hidden worry; Zulf sleeps off his wounds, cracked ribs, broken pride; the Kid sleeps off his pain, but he learns while he sleeps. He dreams, all his old dreams of his mama and the Wall, but he has new dreams. Dreams the Bastion sends him, dreams of building and breaking and starting anew. He dreams, and he learns a new language.

They have healed enough to go back to regular life, as best as they can. Zia can attend to her own needs and not have her hands shake in worry; Rucks can go back to spinning his tales; Zulf can walk once more, and is no longer in danger of choking on his blood in his sleep; and the Kid can lead again, lead like he did in the old days. He is not the oldest, nor the wisest, but he has worked tirelessly, and he has never steered them wrong. They look up to him, and wait for his instruction.

“It’s time to go.” The Kid watches the horizon, a breeze blowing through his hair, passing through his clothes. “We need to keep moving.”

Zia is watering her flowers. They do not need water; they bloom from her love alone. She looks up. “Why do you say that?”

“The Bastion says so. She wants to go.”

Zia goes back to watering her flowers. Her hair whips around in the breeze. “Okay,” she says, and she does not question it.

They set sail. Zia watches the stars, and Zulf maps out their course from that. When it is late, and they are alone, they pass the spyglass back and forth and name the constellations. When new stars come, stars they don’t know, they make up their own, snippets of their pasts woven in the names, secrets coded within. Rucks steers the Bastion, and he does not trust Zulf, not yet, not for a long time, but a map of the stars cannot lie. They move on as they should.

The Kid looks over the maps. The sunlight pours in through a window and sets them aglow. “This is all wrong,” he says. “We can’t go this way.”

Zulf’s brow furrows. “Why not?” he asks. His voice is no longer broken and tinted with blood. “It makes perfect sense.”

The Kid shakes his head. “But it’s not how she wants to go.” He takes a quill and maps out a new route, lines dark and thick and shaky. “This is the direction she wants.”

“She?” Zulf tilts his head. “Do you mean Zia?”

“The Bastion,” the Kid says, like it’s obvious, like it’s easy. “She wants to go this way.”

Zulf looks to Zia; Zia shrugs. Zulf looks to Rucks; Rucks shrugs. “Kid…” Zulf starts, slow, treading lightly, “how… how do you know this?”

“She tells me.” At their look of confusion, the Kid adds, “What? You don’t hear it?”

“Hear what?”

“The Bastion.” The Kid taps the quill on the map, thinking. “Guess it’s not hearing… Feeling. You don’t feel it?”

“Kid, have you been getting enough rest?” Zulf’s lips pull into a tight frown. His voice betrays his worry. “The Bastion is an inanimate object; it can’t say or feel anything.”

The Kid shakes his shaggy head. He brushes his hair from his eyes. “Not true. She’s alive. She tells me things. I feel it.”

Zulf rubs the bridge of his nose. “If the Bastion is talking to you, there’s something wrong. Buildings, islands, whatever this is—they don’t talk.”

The Kid waves him off. “You just don’t understand.” He hands Rucks the map. “Take this route.”

Rucks looks at Zulf, at the Kid, at the map, and says, “Alright. Guess we’re headin’ off now.”

Zulf shakes his head. “This is crazy. I can’t believe this.” He leaves, and they watch him go in silence.

The Bastion stops. The Kid takes the Skyway, and when he comes back, he is laden with berries and fruit and meat. The Kid smiles at Zulf, a quiet ‘I told you,’ and after that, no one speaks out against his corrections to the map.

Zia steps into the Kid’s tent one sunny afternoon, while he is napping. She watches him sleep, like she often does. She waits, patient, quiet, and when he wakes, she asks, “What’s it like?”

The Kid sits up and yawns. His hair is more a mess than usual. “What’s what like?” he asks as he rubs his eyes.

“Hearing the Bastion.” She draws her knees up to her chest. Her eyes are bright and unwavering. “What does she say?”

Zia likes the Bastion being a she. The Bastion is comforting, warm, a steady structure that will never fail them. The Bastion is like the mothers they lost long ago.

“It’s not hearing, not exactly,” the Kid says. “Just… feeling it. Feel it in my bones.”

“Do you think I’ll ever be able to hear it?” Zia asks.

The Kid shrugs and lies back down. “Maybe,” he says, and yawns. “Going back to bed.”

He falls asleep quickly. Zia lays an arm’s length away, almost close enough to brush her fingers against his back, and is caught in thought for a long time before she finally drifts off to sleep.

Zulf is back to hiding in his tent. He spends little time outside, sunning, growing, healing again, and instead wilts in the darkness. Zia and the Kid whisper to each other about what to do, and the Kid says, “I got it. I’ll take care of him.”

“Are you sure?” Zia asks. “He might be more comfortable talking to me.”

Zia and Zulf have bonded over blood and kinship. No one else understands like they do.

“I got it,” the Kid says. “We get each other now.”

The Kid enters Zulf’s tent and Zulf is asleep. Zulf is often asleep, too much asleep. The Kid shakes him awake and Zulf says, “What? Leave me alone.”

“No,” says the Kid. He sits down next to Zulf. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Zulf growls, and he pulls his pillow over his head. The Kid pulls it away.

“Talk to me,” he says. His voice lowers, gentle, pleading. “It’s okay.”

“…Fine,” Zulf grumbles. He sits up, ignores the ache of his old wounds. “I’m… I don’t have a use anymore. Zia cooks better than I do, and my charts are useless. I can’t very well go on the Skyway. There’s nothing left to do.”

“Not true.” The Kid stands and pulls Zulf up. Zulf is too light to put up resistance. “Come with me.”

He drags Zulf out of his tent, and Zulf squints in the light. The Bastion leads them only on a path of bright sun and wispy clouds. The Kid drags Zulf across the Bastion, past Zia, past Rucks, his big hand firmly grasping Zulf’s thin wrist. When they finally stop, it’s in front of a half-built structure, a washroom the Kid is building onto the Forge. It’s a better place to bath than a tub surrounded by cloth walls. It’s a better thing to do than standing on the other side of the Bastion when Zia bathes on windy days. They can get warm water, too, and Zulf will no longer have to worry about his still healing body catching cold.

The Kid gestures to the stones laid out in front of the structures, a deep grey, strong and stable and ready for the world. Zulf shakes his head. He does not yet pull his wrist from the Kid’s grasp. “I’m too weak to lift them.”

“Put on the caulk,” the Kid tells him. He grins bright like the sun that shines in their eyes. “We can build it together.”

“…Alright.” Zulf smiles, just a little. The Kid lets go of his wrist, and Zulf picks up the caulk. “I can do that.”

They work side-by-side, shoulder-to-shoulder, their arms brushing against each other, always touching, and they finish the building together, a place made of sweat and strength and pride.

The Kid watches as Rucks steers the Bastion, learns from his movements, the setting sun lighting up both of them. One day, the Kid will need to take over for Rucks. They don’t talk about it, because it’s pointless to talk about something everyone knows. It’s pointless to fight against a future already set. Instead they sit in silence, and speak without words. The only sound is the creak and groan of the wood, and that’s how it should be.

Rucks looks over the map, Zia and Zulf’s path edited over by the Kid’s. “She wants to go north?”

The Kid nods. “Feels right. Something good is north.”

Rucks has never questioned the Kid. The Kid and the Bastion have never steered them wrong, and he’s wise enough to know when to leave a good thing alone. Guidance, however vague, is better than flying blind. They fall back into silence, and the Bastion moves along easily.

“…Got a question for you, Kid,” Rucks starts. The Kid nods. “When the Bastion speaks… it’s like she’s speaking through you, right? Don’t need words. Just a feeling.”

“Yeah,” the Kid says, and nods again. He laces his fingers behind his head. “Like… like she’s a part of me.”

“Ever have that happen on the Wall?” Rucks drums his fingers on the steering wheel. “Like she told you what parts needed fixin’, or what parts need defendin’. Where to go, what to do.”

The Kid tilts his head back, thinks. Long moments pass, and he finally says, “…Sometimes. Didn’t know what it was, back then.”

Rucks smiles, something nostalgic and proud. “Good. Never felt it here, but the Wall, she was a talker. Told me everything she needed.”

The Kid smiles back. They share a history none of the others could understand, and it’s better that they don’t. No one else deserves the pain of understanding. They fall back into silence, and the Kid can feel the Bastion’s approval deep in his heart. More silence passes, a comfort, an ease, and then Rucks says, “Take the wheel for a spin. Show me where she wants to go.”

The Kid takes the wheel, and they fly straight and true into the sunset.

The night has taken over the sky, dark stripes of blue and purple swallowing the last glimpses of the sun. Zia and Zulf lie on the grass, passing the spyglass back and forth as they swap stories. Private things, thing they only share with each other, things no one else will ever know. When their stories die down, Zia says, “I wish I could hear the Bastion like the Kid does. I wonder what she has to say.”

Zulf shrugs. He idly runs his fingers through the grass. “Maybe it’s better if only the Kid knows. Maybe it’s only meant for the Kid.”

“Guess so,” Zia replies, twisting the spyglass in her hands. “Still, it’d be nice.”

Zulf nods, and they fall into quiet, a quiet the Kid has shown them, a new language he taught them, like the Bastion taught him. They pass the spyglass back and forth with no words, and eventually, they fall asleep, arms out, fingers breaths away from touching. The Kid walks out and finds them, and takes the spyglass, and gazes up at the night sky as he sits between them. He watches until the sun creeps up the horizon, and he falls asleep between them, curled up, their breathing in perfect unison.

The Bastion turns the wheel by herself. She sails on, and deep in their bones, she sings her support.


End file.
